Larry Klayman was a participant or observer in the following events:

FBI agent Robert Wright gives the FBI a mission statement he wrote that outlines his complaints against his agency. It reads, in part, “Knowing what I know, I can confidently say that until the investigative responsibilities for terrorism are removed from the FBI, I will not feel safe. The FBI has proven for the past decade it cannot identify and prevent acts of terrorism against the United States and its citizens at home and abroad. Even worse, there is virtually no effort on the part of the FBI’s International Terrorism Unit to neutralize known and suspected terrorists residing within the United States. Unfortunately, more terrorist attacks against American interests, coupled with the loss of American lives, will have to occur before those in power give this matter the urgent attention it deserves.” Wright asks the FBI for permission to make his complaints public. Larry Klayman, chairman of the public-interest group Judicial Watch, claims that regulations require the FBI to give or deny clearance within 30 days, which would have made FBI failures an issue before 9/11. But the FBI delays making a decision and will only allow Wright to publicly reveal his mission statement in May 2002. [Cybercast News Service, 5/30/2002; Federal News Service, 5/30/2002] One month later, Wright and his lawyer David Schippers have a meeting with a reporter from the CBS news program 60 Minutes to express the concerns in his statement. He claims that he says it is only a matter of time before there will be an attack on US soil. However, he is prohibited by his superior from speaking to 60 Minutes or any other media outlet. [Federal News Service, 6/2/2003] Schippers will later claim that this month he also attempts to contact a number of important politicians with his concerns based on information from Wright and other FBI agents that he knows, but he was rebuffed (see July-Late August 2001).

Judicial Watch logo. [Source: Judicial Watch]The conservative government watchdog organization Judicial Watch sends a letter to Vice President Dick Cheney demanding to see the records of his secret energy task force (see January 29, 2001 and May 16, 2001). Chris Farrell, the organization’s director of investigations and research, saw a May 2001 Newsweek article about the task force. Farrell later says he was struck by the similarities between Cheney’s energy task force and the 1994 health care task force chaired by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. “The government can’t operate in secret,” Farrell will later say. “They are answerable to the people. There are appropriate times for secrecy on military and intelligence matters, but the notion that national policy on a matter like energy or health care can be developed in secret is offensive and counter to the Constitution.” Farrell, along with Judicial Watch chairman Larry Klayman and president Thomas Fitton, agreed that the task force violates core conservative principles, and made the decision to challenge Cheney’s office. Their letter notes that the rules governing the task force are clear: if the executive branch chooses to solicit outside advice while writing policy, then the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) is triggered, requiring the government to make the details of those meetings public (the same argument made by the General Accounting Office—see May 8, 2001). “Judicial Watch respectfully requests that, in light of the questionable legal and ethical practices, negative publicity, and public outrage surrounding Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 1994 national health-care policy development group, you direct the [energy task force] to abide by the FACA. [Such openness] will instill public trust and confidence in the operations of the [task force] and insure that the national policy is formulated, discussed, and acted upon in a manner consistent with the best traditions of our Constitutional Republic.” [Savage, 2007, pp. 91-92] Cheney’s office will refuse the request (see July 5, 2001). In return, Judicial Watch will sue for the documents’ release (see July 14, 2001).

FBI agent Robert Wright will later claim that the FBI takes extraordinary efforts to gag him in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. According to Wright, “On September the 11th, as I watched the World Trade Center towers burn, I did not initially share the same feelings of surprise and shock and dismay most Americans felt. I just thought to myself, ‘It has begun.’” On the afternoon of 9/11, he claims that he is called by reporters from the New York Times and 60 Minutes who already are aware of his issues with FBI management (see June 9, 2001-July 10, 2001). They ask if he would be willing to go public with his story. He declines. “I’m confident if I had gone public at that time I would have been fired. I realized my termination would only aid the FBI by allowing management to claim I was simply a former employee who was disgruntled over his termination.” Over the next few days, his former supervisor prohibits him from working with the 9/11 investigation. He is not allowed to answer any incoming telephone calls from the general public. The FBI prohibits him from publishing his recently completed book on FBI failures (see May 9, 2002). His lawyers contact a congressman who invites him to come to Washington and present his information to Congress. Wright is immediately prohibited from traveling outside of Chicago without FBI approval. Larry Klayman, one of two lawyers now representing Wright, later says he calls the Justice Department a few days after 9/11 and asks that Wright be allowed to present his issues to Attorney General John Ashcroft. Klayman claims he receives a reply from Michael Chertoff, then head of the Criminal division, who refuses to meet with Wright and says, “We are tired of conspiracy theories.” [Federal News Service, 5/30/2002; Federal News Service, 6/2/2003] On September 20, Wright’s legal representatives publish a list of 20 entities described as “Tax Exempt and Other Entities to Investigate Immediately.” The US will later shut down many of these entities. [Judicial Watch, 9/20/2001] The restrictions placed on Wright will largely continue to hold in the years afterwards. For instance, as of the end of 2005, his book still has not been approved for publication (see May 9, 2002).

Robert Wright tears up as he apologizes to 9/11 victims’ relatives in his 2002 press conference. [Source: Getty Images]FBI agent Robert Wright holds a press conference. He makes a statement that has been preapproved by the FBI. As one account puts it, “Robert Wright’s story is difficult to piece together because he is on government orders to remain silent.… [T]his is in distinct contrast to the free speech and whistle-blower protections offered to Colleen Rowley, general counsel in the FBI Minneapolis office, who got her story out before the agency could silence her. Wright, a 12-year bureau veteran, has followed proper channels” but has been frustrated by limitations on what he is allowed to say (see September 11, 2001-October 2001). “The best he could do [is a] press conference in Washington, D.C., where he [tells] curious reporters that he [has] a whopper of a tale to tell, if only he could.” Wright says that FBI bureaucrats “intentionally and repeatedly thwarted [his] attempts to launch a more comprehensive investigation to identify and neutralize terrorists.” He also claims, “FBI management failed to take seriously the threat of terrorism in the US.” [Fox News, 5/30/2002; Federal News Service, 5/30/2002; LA Weekly, 8/2/2002] Larry Klayman, a lawyer representing Wright, says at the conference that he believes one reason Wright’s investigations were blocked “is because these monies were going through some very powerful US banks with some very powerful interests in the United States. These banks knew or had reason to know that these monies were laundered by terrorists. And there are very significant potential conflicts of interests in both the Clinton and Bush Administrations—with the country primarily responsible for funding these charities, mainly Saudi Arabia. We have both Clinton and Bush, and in particular this Bush Administration, who is as tight with Saudi Arabia as you can get.” He also says, “Corruption is knowing when something is not being done, knowing when the American people are being left unprotected and when you make a decision not to do something to protect the American people… And you effectively allow 9/11 to occur. That is the ultimate form of government corruption—dereliction of duty. That’s subject in the military to prosecution, to court martial…. Frankly, if not treason.” [Federal News Service, 5/30/2002]

Larry Klayman, a former Justice Department official who founded the conservative watchdog organization Judicial Watch, pens an editorial for the online news site WorldNetDaily (WND). Klayman makes the arguably racist assertion that President Obama leads only “his people” and not “white people.” Writing that “President Obama is not a ruler for all of the people, but rather ‘his people,’” Klayman begins by claiming that he was “proud that America could elect a black president and overcome centuries of racial prejudice,” even though Obama is, in his estimation, “a politician far to the left of mainstream America.” But, two years into the Obama administration, Klayman says the American citizenry has been repelled by watching Obama “seemingly favoring his own race and true religious allegiance over whites, Christians, and Jews.” Klayman asserts, without citing evidence, that “the trillion-dollar bailouts… were earmarked for black minority contractors. These bailouts were not only economically stupid, but the money was dolled [sic] out in a discriminatory way.” The Democrats’ health care reform initiative is, Klayman writes, “designed to provide health insurance mostly for the president’s black constituency.” He goes on to cite Obama’s defense of Harvard professor Henry Gates after Gates became involved in an altercation with a Boston police officer; Attorney General Eric Holder’s refusal to prosecute members of the New Black Panther movement who, Klayman claims, “illegally disrupted an election polling place in Philadelphia”; Obama’s supposed association with “black Muslim leaders” such as Louis Farrakhan; his relationship with his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright; and his cancellation of the White House’s commemoration of the National Day of Prayer in favor of, Klayman claims, a White House feast for the Muslim Holy Day of Ramadan, which Klayman says “proves” Obama’s status as a closet Muslim. Klayman then accuses Obama of being anti-Semitic because of his supposed failure to support Israel. Hence, Klayman writes, “the majority of white Christians and Jews no longer see Obama as the president of ‘We the People’ but instead ‘his’ people.… President Obama has not united the races and religions, but instead divided and pitted them against each other. The level of hostility one sees ‘in the streets,’ with a reverse backlash against blacks and Muslims, is frightening and potentially explosive.” Because of these characteristics, Klayman writes, “the nation stands even more—particularly during a severe continuing economic depression—on the precipice of chaos, rebellion, and ultimately revolution.” Any violence launched by white Christians and other Obama opponents, Klayman concludes, will be the fault of Obama. [WorldNetDaily, 10/22/2010] Terry Krepel, the progressive founder of the watchdog organization ConWebWatch, writes: “Klayman is projecting. He’s the one who’s injecting race into things by insisting that Obama rules only ‘his people.’” [Terry Krepel, 10/23/2010]

Larry Klayman, the founder of the conservative media watchdog organization Judicial Watch, writes a column for conservative news blog WorldNetDaily that alleges Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is working behind the scenes to “prove” that President Barack Obama is not a US citizen, thereby ruining his chances of running for re-election in 2012 and opening the door for her own run. Clinton ran a hard-fought primary campaign against Obama in 2008. Klayman resurrects long-disproven allegations that Clinton, during her time as First Lady, had White House staffer Vince Foster murdered to keep him from exposing the raft of “crimes” Klayman says were committed by Clinton, her husband, and others in the Clinton administration. According to Klayman, Obama has always “fear[ed]” having Clinton as a political rival. He did not name her vice president: she “would only have been a stone’s throw away from the Oval Office, and the ‘mullah in chief’ obviously did not want to encourage his own ‘unfortunate accident.’” Instead, Obama “co-opt[ed]” Clinton by fobbing her off to the State Department, where “she could take the blame for his planned foreign policy of anti-Americanism, appeasement, weakness, prevarication, and hostility toward Israel and nearly all things Jewish and Christian. This would serve the dual purpose of harming her political base should she ever decide to run for president against him in 2012.” Klayman notes that Clinton has said she would not return as secretary of state if Obama wins reelection in 2012. Klayman believes Clinton is angling for the presidency in 2012, and speculates “that she herself may again be working on the so-called ‘birther’ issue, which she first raised during her 2008 presidential campaign. For if Hillary can finally obtain proof positive that President Obama was born in Kenya, and not in Hawaii as he claims, then she will not have to send him on a day trip to Fort Marcy Park [the site of Foster’s suicide] to retire him as president. What could be cleaner?” [WorldNetDaily, 3/19/2011]

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